The Umbrella Academy is Netflix’s newest hit that puts a fresh (albeit dark) spin on the superhero genre with its tale of seven adopted children who were all born on the same day, under the most unusual circumstances.
The series premiered on Netflix on February 15 and now viewers have a lot of questions, including who is Harold Jenkins and how is he the ultimate threat?
We’ve got the answers but be warned, there are quite a few spoilers going forward.
The Umbrella Academy — The backstory
After the death of their father, billionaire industrialist Reginald Hargreeves, the remaining six children came back together to “save the world” — something they prepared for since childhood.
So when Number Five reveals that their biggest threat is named Harold Jenkins, the team works to figure out exactly who he is and how this man could possibly bring about the end of the world.
Who is Harold Jenkins?
It turns out that Harold Jenkins doesn’t have any special powers at all but that doesn’t make him any less of a threat.
Jenkins, who identifies himself to others as Leonard Peabody, is a huge threat as he works to exact revenge on The Umbrella Academy through Vanya, whose powers are far greater than those of her siblings.
Vanya only learns this after accidentally stumbling upon a journal kept by her father.
Harold Jenkins/Leonard Peabody then befriends Vanya in an effort to turn her on her family and use her to get revenge on them.
In a flashback, we see exactly why Jenkins/Peabody wants revenge. When he was a small child, he idolized The Umbrella Academy and having been born on the same day, fantasized that he was one of them.
When give the chance to meet the unusual children, he was confronted by their father. Hargreeves was already a stern man but when he met Jenkins as a child, he was downright mean.
He told the boy that there was nothing special about him and that he’d never be one of them before having him escorted away. The encounter left Jenkins furious and ever since, he’s been obsessed with getting revenge on the whole family.
Harold Jenkins’ home life certainly didn’t help. His mother died during childbirth and his father turned into an abusive, mean drunk.
It was after Reginald Hargreeves rejected Jenkins that he turned dark. One night, when his father ordered him to bring him a beer, Harold Jenkins murdered him with a hammer.
He spent 12 years in prison for the killing and while there, he planned his revenge on The Umbrella Academy. Knowing so much about them, it was easy for him too. He pretended to be Leonard Peabody and signed up for violin lessons with Vanya in order to get closer to her.
Knowing that she has powers but just doesn’t know how to use them, Harold Jenkins, posing as Leonard, starts encouraging Vanya to discover her hidden talents. When she does, it does quite a bit of damage.
When Vanya realizes that her new love interest is actually using her to exact his own revenge, she gets angry and kills him before setting out to learn more about her own truth (and do much more damage.)
By the end of Season 1 on The Umbrella Academy, Harold Jenkins is dead but will he be back for Season 2? The answer is that we don’t really know but based on the way it all ended, there’s a strong possibility that we will see him again, probably in child form.